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Pentagon Study Declares American Empire Is ‘Collapsing’
USA PoliticsThe document concludes that the world has entered a fundamentally new phase of transformation in which US power is in decline, international order is unravelling, and the authority of governments everywhere is crumbling. Having lost its past status of “pre-eminence,” the US now inhabits a dangerous, unpredictable “post-primacy” world, whose defining feature is “resistance to authority.”
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Trump: End the Syria war now
Middle EastPresident Trump, according to numerous reliable Washington sources, has decided to end US arms supplies and logistics support to Syria’s jihadist rebels that have fuelled the bloody six-year conflict. Washington, and its allies Britain and France, have persistently denied arming Syria’s jihadist rebels fighting to bring down the Russian and Iranian-backed government of President Bashar Assad.
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Seattle wants to tax the rich so the poor can afford to live there
USA PoliticsSeattle has the fourth-highest tax burden for families earning $25,000 among 51 other urban centres, according to a report done by the chief financial officer for the District of Columbia. It is ranked fifth in the United States for its number of millennials earning more than $350,000 a year and is home to six Fortune 500 companies.
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Republican Push to Replace Obamacare Reflects Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
USA PoliticsAs Republicans attempt to revive a bill to overturn Obamacare, we look at the radical right’s attempt to reshape the role of the federal government—from healthcare to education to housing. We speak with Duke University historian Nancy MacLean, author of the new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America.
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Trumping nature
EnvironmentSuch is the depth of Trump’s planned assault on environmental regulation that it bathes his predecessors in a greenish light. As the U.S. turns back the clock on its already grossly inadequate measures to mitigate the most menacing ecological fallout from industrial capitalist civilization, the countdown to ecocide accelerates. And while some of the harm Trump & Co. wreak in other policy areas may ultimately be reversible, the injury to ecosystems will be all but irremediable.
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Colin Kaepernick: Patriotism and the Owning Class
CultureIt is not enough that Colin Kaepernick is proving to be a modern-day Roberto Clemente, or that he’s following the path of the great Muhammad Ali; American society (and its sports industries) under capitalism demands that profit remains a priority over people. In order to maintain this, it must insist that workers bow down to bosses; that citizens refrain from questioning their rulers; that everyday people not dare to step out of line.
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Paris is Burning
USA PoliticsThe damage that Trump is doing cannot be understated, but no matter who the President of the United States is and no matter what global agreements are crafted at the United Nations, we need to build a movement that is big enough, creative enough, and radical enough that it cannot be ignored. As the People’s Climate March insisted, “to change everything, we need everyone.”
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When Communism Inspired Americans
SocialismHundreds of thousands of Americans were Communists at one time or another during those 40 years. Many of these people endured social isolation, financial and professional ruin, and even imprisonment. They were two generations of Americans whose lives were formed by political history as were no other American lives save those of the original Revolutionists. History is in them — and they are in history.
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The far right goes on a rampage in Berkeley
USA PoliticsRight-wingers have been looking ever since to take revenge in Berkeley, not so much against the UC administration as the larger number of people who had the courage to show their revulsion for the right’s one-time hero Yiannopoulos. As David Neiwert of the Southern Poverty Law Center pointed out, organizers of the April 15 rally referred to it on social media as “the Next Battle of Berkeley.”
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D.C.‘s war madness
USA PoliticsYet the moment Trump gave the order to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase used in a chemical weapons attack a few days earlier, all was forgotten and forgiven. Finally Trump became president! Finally he put Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his place! Finally the U.S. showed it had moved beyond former President Barack Obama’s reluctance to use military force!
